A HALF-CENTURY OF SUPPORT
Q. With numerous requirements across the military, how does DLA stay on target and achieve its goals? How did DLA’s three areas of focus come into development?
A. One of the techniques we’ve used over the past three years to try to make sure that the leadership of the agency, at the headquarters and in the field, is aligned in effort is the Annual Director’s Guidance. We go through a structured process with a small group of senior leaders to look at the current and future environment, where the services need DLA to contrib- ute to their support and success, and we identify a relatively small number of ini- tiatives that we’ll pursue, in addition to the work of today, to prepare the agency for that future.
DLA operates under a multiyear strategic plan, but it’s a way of operationalizing that and making sure that instead of chas- ing a million points of light, you have a much smaller list that you really focus on, you put a lot of effort and resources into, and you move forward on. And it’s been very successful.
Q. In your view, what have been DLA’s big achievements and challenges in those three areas of focus?
A. In warfighter support, first of all, DLA’s global organization [is] support- ing all four of the Armed Forces. We also have a significant role in Foreign Military Sales, so we do have a global support responsibility with respect to warfighter support. If you look at the Army, it’s not only the deployed Army that is operating in contingency opera- tions in Southwest Asia, but it’s also Army forces deployed in the Pacific, as well as in Europe, Africa, around the world, and the non-deployed forces training here in the United States that are a very impor- tant area of support.
64 Army AL&T Magazine
ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ
VADM Alan S. Thompson, Director of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), speaks to Soldiers from the 2025th Transportation Company of the Alabama National Guard at Contingency Operating Location Speicher dining facility. (U.S. Army photo by SFC Thomas Benoit, 1083rd Transportation Company.)
Certainly for the last decade, the sup- port for the Iraq, Afghanistan, Southwest Asia contingency has been an effort that has been very large and very demanding from many different dimensions, and one that was somewhat unprecedented in the way that we’ve done it. If you look a little closer to today’s time in the CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] area of respon- sibility at support for Army forces there, the last couple of years in Iraq has been a story of supporting continued opera- tions at a somewhat diminished level, but a huge growth in the support requirement for downsizing the force, reducing the operating bases.
Q. It’s a complicated equation.
A. It is, and it has a lot of interest on the part of various oversight bodies. It is important to get it right because it’s bil- lions and billions of dollars of property that the American taxpayer has paid for, and we want to make sure it’s disposed of appropriately, and that we get the greatest potential benefit within the Department of Defense that we can possibly get. The
The entire story of dealing with the disposal of unneeded supplies and equip- ment has been a huge achievement, and it’s one that certainly DLA has had a great deal of participation in, but it’s really been a team effort with the Army. It’s a four-step process, and we’re only Step 4, so a great deal of it is dealt with through a structured process of looking for opportunities to either redistribute
Department of the Army, of course, is the predominant beneficiary there. There’s also an environmental issue to some of the mercury—so you’ve got to make sure you’re doing right by the environment.
This has been done through a number of different disposal sites that we have operated in Iraq, as well as a large num- ber of smaller teams that have essentially traveled around the battlespace in Iraq, working with the commanders of each of the forward operating bases and combat outposts, trying to do, to the greatest extent, the planning and even disposal in place for the unneeded sup- plies and materials.
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